The Age of Innocence Year 1
by LoreleiZabini
Summary: Harry Potter A History, the definitive guide to determining fact from fiction. Lorelei Zabini spent decades trawling through primary sources and eye-witness accounts to finally reveal in this tell-all book the real Harry Potter.


Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

The Age of Innocence- Year One

Prologue:

The fateful evening that Dumbledore decided that it would be best to leave the saviour of the wizarding world lying discarded on the doorstep of Number 12 Privet Drive would forever after be regarded by the history books as the moment when that once great wizard sunk into the indignities of senility.

Even using the eccentric moral compass of magical Britain leaving a baby exposed to the elements in the dying days of October was inexcusable. Using any moral compass at all, abandoning a baby on a doorstep without having the courtesy to ensure that the child was welcome was indefensible. But Albus Dumbledore was to compound these sins with an infinitely worse one. For Albus Dumbledore was knowingly abandoning Harry Potter to a household where magic-phobic muggles resided. Not only that but he coerced the muggles into accepting the child into their household by writing a letter threatening dire consequences if his orders not carried out. Some highly illegal blood magic wards later and wizards who were not personally keyed in by Dumbledore became unable to set foot on the block where the Dursleys resided. It was a recipe for child abuse.

The official explanation of senility that many have since used to excuse Dumbledore's actions fails to take into account one simple factor. That is of Human Nature. An equally plausible reason behind Dumbledore's actions was that Harry Potter threatened him. In removing Lord Voldermort from his body Harry Potter managed to achieve something that Dumbledore never did. For a man revered as a hero and the de facto Leader of the Light since his defeat of Grindelwald in 1944, seeing a mere baby outstrip him would have been intolerable. Dumbledore needed to come up with a plan that would ensure that Harry Potter would be unable to threaten his positions of power when he grew up.

The only way to accomplish this was to fashion Harry Potter into a weapon that Dumbledore could control. What better way to do this than to place the child into an abusive home and then come to the rescue eleven years later? Harry Potter would be forever grateful to whoever saved him from the hell-hole that was his childhood and would be all the more malleable to the ideals that his perceived saviours held.

In placing Harry Potter in the dubious 'care' of his relatives Dumbledore disregarded the Potter's wills, broke dozens of laws relating to child safety and welfare and invoked the wrath of an entire House.

Much has been written about Harry Potter. A search of the Library of Babylon using the phrase 'Harry Potter' turns up some 56 783 books written about or predominately about Harry Potter. Potter managed to enter the collective wizard psyche in way unmatched since Myrddin Emrys some three thousand years ago.

And why not? Harry Potter is eminently suited to a prominent place in mythology. At the age of one he managed to expel one of the Darkest Lords of all time from his body, and became the only person in recorded History to survive the killing curse. His school days are filled with similar tales of woe.

At the age of eleven Potter navigated as a _first year_ a set of booby traps engineered by some of the most brilliant minds of his age, fought off a troll, protected the Philosopher's stone and managed to kill an agent possessed by Lord Voldermort. During his second year Potter killed a basilisk and managed to simultaneously defeat a reincarnation of Voldermort. During his third year Harry Potter managed to drive off over hundred dementors with one patronus. And all of this before reaching the age of fourteen?

So much has been written about Harry Potter that when I broached this book with my publisher he raised his eyebrows and remarked "How could you possibly have anything new to say about the man?"

The answer to that question ladies and gentlemen lies in the manner in which the vast majority of historians have approached Albus Dumbledore's actions towards Harry Potter over the last five hundred years. By going back to the primary sources I aim to reveal how Dumbledore's schemes and manipulations irredeemably shaped the man that Potter would become.

Dumbledore, for better and often for worse, was a massive authority figure in Harry Potter's life. No comprehensive study of Dumbledore's actions towards Harry Potter has ever been attempted before. Personally I am a great believer in History being a tool from which we can learn from past mistakes. But the full scale of the corruption, manipulations and intrigues of the world that Harry Potter lived in has yet to be fully revealed. Until we learn about it and learn from it, History will be doomed to repeat itself.

Thus I aim to tell you a story. It is a story that proves the old goblin adage 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'. It is a story about a Baby who was abandoned on a doorstep. It is a story about an abused little boy who would grow up to be one of the greatest wizards to ever walk the earth. It is an epic tale about good battling with evil. It is a story that begins when Albus Dumbledore decided to dump Harry Potter on the Doorstep of Number 12 Privet Drive...

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